THE ASCENT OF MONT BLANC
Soon they descended, the doctor al
most as helpless as a child, and towards
midnight arrived at their former camp
on the Montagne de la Cote, where they
passed the night, suffering intensely from
frost-bite. Next morning the wretched
doctor was completely blind and had to
make his entry into Chamonix hanging
to the strap of his guide's knapsack!
Balmat was himself almost unrecogniz
able, with his "red eyes and blue ears."
But with all the pain he suffered, he
could enter Chamonix with a proud step,
for he had conquered where so many had
failed.
The poor peasant guide now became
known far beyond the limits of his native
valley, even receiving a patent of nobility
from the King of Sardinia, and he was
henceforward known as "Balmat, dit
Mont Blanc."
De Saussure soon learned of his suc
cess, and the next year, guided by Bal
mat and accompanied by 17 other guides
and a servant, with a great quantity of
physical apparatus, he made the ascent.
Later he ascended the Col du Geant, a
lofty pass in the range, and had two en
gravings made which show the manner
in which he made his mountain ascents.
In the one showing his party descend
ing, they are all wandering about like
sheep; no rope is visible, each person
helping himself with his alpenstock as
best he may, and each, it may be re
marked, using the stock wrongly, plac
ing it before rather than behind him, on
which to lean his weight, de Saussure
himself seeming to be on the point of
harpooning his own foot!
AN EXTRAORDINARY MOUNTAINEERING
COSTUME
The Professor is dressed in a long
tailed silk coat with huge buttons-the
very coat is said to be preserved in the
ancestral mansion at Genthod, near Ge
neva--and he looks much more as if he
were ready for an afternoon promenade
than a climb on the ice fields of Mont
Blanc. One of the party is carrying a
ladder for crossing crevasses, a custom
now for the most part given up.
Thus at length the mountain monarch
was fairly conquered, and from this time
on his neck may be said to have been
bent beneath the yoke of man. But in
the succeeding quarter century there
were but a half dozen other ascents.
Until 1819 the only variation on Bal
mat's route was at the beginning of the
route, the Montagne de la Cote being
given up for the route to the left of the
glacier "des Bossons" by the Pierre a
l'Echelle. In 1827 the so-called "corri
dor" route from the Grand Plateau was
discovered by Sir Charles Fellowes, and
since then the upper route by the "Ancien
Passage" has been abandoned. In 1859
the route over the ridge of the "Bosses,"
which had proven too much for Balmat's
companions, was found practicable, and
is now even more popular than the "cor
ridor" route. Still another route from
St. Gervais-further to the south of
'Chamonix, in the valley-up over the
Aiguille and Dome du Gofiter and the
ridge of the "Bosses,"
has been coming
into favor; and, besides these three
routes on the French side, there are five
others from Courmayeur, on the Italian
side, though little used.
Many things have increased Chamo
nix's fame since de Saussure's day. In
1832 Alexandre Dumas visited the vil
lage and gave great publicity to it by the
chapters in his "Impressions du Voyage,"
wherein he described his famous inter
view with the then aged Balmat. In 1842
Professor Forbes carried on his exten
sive studies relative to the movements of
glaciers, establishing the fame of the great
glacier, the Mer de Glace.
But it was the popular lectures given
all over England by Albert Smith, and
illustrated by dioramic views of his as
cent of Mont Blanc, in 1851, which espe
cially spread the fame of the mountain.
As a result of these lectures, there were
64 ascents in the six years following
1851, whereas there had been only 57
in the preceding 64 years.
THE AIGUILLES MORE DIFFICULT THAN
THE MOUNTAIN
And since 1851 not a summer has
passed without at least one ascent being
accomplished. The other peaks in the
range have also gradually been van
quished one by one. The last to surrender
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